“He’ll take care of it. You’ll see.”
Nyktos’s door opened before Paxton could even knock on it. The Primal stepped out into the hall, and all coherent thought sort of abandoned me.
His damp hair was free, brushing his shoulders, and that piece I’d cut with the sword kissed the curve of his right cheek. He wore no shirt. Beads of water lingered on the hard, lean lines of his chest and stomach. His soft leather pants clung indecently to his lean hips as if he barely allowed his body time enough to dry from the bath before pulling them on. He hadn’t even fastened them.
“What’s going on out here?” Nyktos asked.
“I was doing as you asked, Your Highness, seeing if she would like water to bathe, but she said she’d use what was brought in this morning.”
Nyktos said something, but I wasn’t exactly sure as I was really engrossed in the swirl of tattooed drops that traveled along the sides of his waist and inner hips, disappearing—“Sera.”
Blinking, I lifted my gaze to his. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”
There was that warmth in his eyes again, turning them a molten silver. “Perhaps if you stopped ogling me for five seconds, you’d hear me.”
“I’m notoglingyou,” I muttered, blinking.
Paxton frowned. “What does ogling mean?”
“To look at someone amorously,” Nyktos answered. “And rather impertinently.” He paused, his eyes meeting mine. “As if they have no control over where their eyesstray.”
The boy grinned before ducking his chin. “Yeah, that’s totally what you were doing.”
I turned to Paxton. “You don’t know what ogling means, but you know what amorously and impertinently are?”
“Pax is well familiar with all the various phrasings of impertinent,” Nyktos said, and the boy’s skin crinkled at his eyes as his grin grew. “You didn’t use the water brought in this morning?”
“Not really, but I—”
“The water has to be freezing by now.”
Paxton threw up his arms. “That’s what I said.”
Walking forward, Nyktos dropped his hand to the top of Paxton’s head as he passed, ruffling the boy’s floppy strands of hair. The gesture was…it was kind of sweet. “I’ll heat it up.”
“That’s not necessary,” I repeated to no avail as Nyktos brushed past me and entered the bedchamber. Wait a second… “How are you going to heat the water?”
“Magic,” he tossed out in a light tone that I hadn’t heard from him in far too long.
“Really?” I replied dryly, ignoring whatever silliness my heart and mind were engaged in. “You can use eather to heat water?”
“He’s a Primal god,” Paxton said, sounding incredibly exasperated for someone his age. “There’s nothing hecan’tdo.”
“That’s not entirely true.” Nyktos glanced at the bed, a slight frown pulling at his lips. “There are many things I can’t do.”
“Name one,” Paxton challenged.
“Getting my soon-to-be Consort to follow instructions would be one of them.”
Paxton giggled as my eyes narrowed on the center of the spiraling ink scrawled across his back. I crossed my arms over my chest. “That’s going to get even harder for you now.”
“As if it would have gotten easier.” Nyktos stopped at the entrance to the bathing chamber.
I inched forward, followed by Paxton. I wouldn’t admit it, but I was curious to see just how Nyktos would warm the water.
However, much like I did every time I entered the space, Nyktos just stood there. The breadth of his shoulders tightened. He looked over his shoulder, first at the made bed and then me.
“Are you heating the water with your mind?”